Comments on “Caned”

1. I’m still trying to shake off the disappointment, but as long as we can still rally around our team in the next couple of games, I’ll be proud to be a Hokie.

   Bret on November 7th, 2005 at 8:34 pm

2. I don’t think that you can blame Vick for the deep passes to Clowney. On the first play of the game, we ran a post with King (who was wide open) and drew a flag. I guess Stinespring thought that it would work everytime against a faster Miami secondary. On the next drive, Vick had a wide open Clowney on a flag route but overthrew him. So early in the same, Vick had his chances for the big play but couldn’t execute. As the game went on and we continued to call the same plays, it didn’t take a rocket scientist for Miami to play a safety on the deep route. On one of the interceptions, there were three receivers running the same route and Vick threw it to the guy that was double covered. If we would have been able to execute early on, then that would have opened up the running attack like it did last year with Humes.

   I think that the failed execution early in the game haunted us for the rest of game and never let us establish any rhythm. Now I know how our previous 8 opponents felt.

   Mario Ceste on November 16th, 2005 at 4:58 am

3. Welcome to BTN, Mario, and thanks for commenting!

   Good thoughts, and I agree in part. (I meant to do a longer analysis post early last week, after digesting the loss for a couple days, but never got around to it… so here goes.)

   This game is hugely different if they don’t interfere with King — that play could have gone TD. (Which means UM did exactly the right thing there — it was worth taking the penalty.) It’s also hugely different if one of those early deep balls gets to Clowney. I was telling people early on that we were about a yard away, on three different throws, from the game we predicted. (Two horrific officiating decisions against Darryl Tapp — the bogus illegal-contact and a holding non-call where Tapp’s arm nearly got pulled backwards out of its socket by a Miami OL — on Miami’s TD drive didn’t help either.)

   IIRC, Vick audibled into several of the late deep balls to Clowney, and you saw Clowney jumping up and down in the 4th when he finally caught one. The coaching staff appears to have given Marcus much more latitude at the line, deeper into the playbook, than any VT QB I can remember (Michael didn’t know enough of the playbook, Randall was just limited in the plays he could physically execute, and Druck finished up the year before I came to Tech). This means Marcus can do amazing things when he’s locked in — see WVU. But he can make a very big mess if his head isn’t on straight, and the misfires got him flustered. (As did the running game’s mediocrity — why the heck did we not use Ore in the second quarter?!?!)

   All that is a long way of saying I don’t think the coaches’ playcalling was so much the problem as the players’ execution. (The refusal to use Ore, though, I will burn them on.) A couple of misfires, that Miami TD drive, and our players sorta lost their heads while Miami gained confidence. Then nobody in the country could have beaten Miami the way they played in the second and third quarters. Hopefully with the off week, our guys have gotten it together in time for UVa, because they’ve played to the level of their competition all year, and Marques Hagans is their Bryan Randall. He’s not going to want to leave this rivalry, on Senior Day in Hooville, on a loss.

   Josh Crockett on November 16th, 2005 at 10:29 am